One of the best things about belonging to a garden club are the plant swaps. If it wasn't for the swaps and the outright generosity of other gardeners my gardens would be mostly empty. Next week is the first swap and I've been potting up foxglove, blanket flower, butterfly weed and beebalm along with lupine seedlings. One of the new drivers at work also hosts a swap on the 1st Sunday in June. Being a new gardener I don't always know what I'm getting but I haven't been disappointed yet!
This was part of my haul from the swap last May. I had never heard of lungwort before and I was looking for another shade plant so I grabbed the little brown pot.
This is how it looks today. It has really spread and I'm loving the flowers. They start out purple, fade to lavender and eventually pink so that all three colors appear together. The spotted leaves will look good with the hostas and astilbe planted nearby.
I can't wait to see what I'll get this year!
Tuesday, May 13, 2008
Wanna Trade?
Sunday, September 23, 2007
A Gathering of Gardeners
We got up very early yesterday to attend A Gathering of Gardeners symposium in Rochester. We went with five other members of our club, Gardening Friends, in two cars. Country Girl left her house at 5:45 and picked me up last, about 6:30, and we headed down the Thruway so we could hit the plant sale before all of the good stuff was gone. So what did we talk about on the long ride? Mulch! And Ron had put his GPS mapping thingy in Country Girl's car so we had fun with that too.
Her, a magazine of the RD & C has a good description of the symposium. I was a bit disappointed by size of the plant sale but the vendors that were there were very friendly and knowledgeable, willing to answer my many questions. A couple of vendors actually had prices that I could afford (not that any of the prices were unreasonable, they just didn't fit my budget.) Others in our group also shopped so the trunk was packed full with plants destined for 4 gardens with plans to divide and share them in a couple of years. One plant that we all kept going back to, but none of us bought was Callicarpa dichotoma "Early Amethyst" - Beauty berry shrub. My picture doesn't do it justice, the berries were very pretty. After looking it up when I got home I found that it is a zone 5 shrub making it an iffy plant for everyone else in our group who all garden in zone 4. I found other varieties online that I liked too so I will consider adding one next spring.
But we did go for more than the plant sale! There were two speakers and each gave two different presentations. We learned about adding structure to our gardens and all 4 lectures were filled with slides introducing us to new plants, combinations that work, combinations that don't and how to design something that will work in our gardens. Several of their suggestions just didn't appeal to me but there were many more that did. I'm sure I'll be playing with my graph paper over the winter. One plant that Steven Silk really liked and I will probably never plant we first saw on GW. Though interesting I don't see myself planting something with leaf thorns!
It would be great if there were more gardening events like this closer to home. We even talked about trying to host our own as a fund raiser in the future. For now though we will continue to plan more road trips.
Here are a couple of links that I found for the two speakers.
Thrillers, Fillers and Spillers, by Steven Silk at Fine Gardening Magazine. (I can't link directly to the article so you'll have to go to Containers and then look for it.)
Robert Herman has his own website, Uncommon Plants.
Monday, June 25, 2007
Busy Busy Garden Week
Our garden club, Gardening Friend's, had our regular meeting last Wednesday. In June we tour a couple of members gardens prior to the business meeting. This year we traveled to Richland, NY. In both gardens I found plenty of plants that I just gotta have! I also got some ideas about what plants look good together. It's fun to get out and see what others have actually done and get a chance to learn from them and other members. With our group there is always somebody ready with an answer to my unending questions!
Our meeting focused on our Garden Tour and plant sale which we had in Mexico, NY on Saturday. I bought lots of plants and still had money left to go out to lunch with Country Girl! I volunteered to be at one of the gardens which I don't think I'll do again. Country Girl worked the check-in table so we really didn't get to spend much time together until late in the day. Next time I'll work at the plant sale or something. We did abandon our posts for a bit to tour two of the gardens together and after a late lunch she drove down to my house to "tour" my garden. Plans are in the works for a sister's day this weekend!
Saturday, March 24, 2007
Gardening Friends Get Together
It was great to see everyone from the garden club again! It's seems much longer than two months since I have seen everyone. We had a great turn out and a few new people signed up. It is always fun to make new Gardening Friends. We have another great year planned with speakers, road trips, plant and book exchanges, our flower show, the Garden Tour and Happy Day the Garden Tea is back!
Our President arranged to have a yoga teacher come in and show us some stretches we could do before and after gardening. We have a gamut of ages and personalities in the club and was it a riot! I have to say I was surprised that almost all participated. There were all kinds of cracks throughout the whole demonstration! A few people had some bones make that cracking sound but most of it was the kidding that went back and forth. Poor Pete will be reminded of his bones cracking for many meetings to come, I'm glad he's such a good sport and enjoys the fun of it all! The instructor was a great and I think she was thrilled everyone got into it. One of the exercises made us all look silly but it really seemed to work. It was a cool down you can do. You relax your body and roll your tongue, now that your tongue is sticking out of your mouth and rolled up suck air in through it. Now close your mouth and breath the air out through your nose. It did seem to cool us down after we did it a few times and was fun to watch everyone trying to roll their tongues!
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